Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Friday, April 13, 2007

Kites fly in jet stream to generate electricity

The Economist has an interesting article about different proposals to harvest wind energy from the jet stream (elevation: 10km). A San Diego, CA company called Sky WindPower wants to send giant kite-turbines into the jet stream to generate power.

Mr Shepard’s flying generator looks like a cross between a kite and a helicopter. It has four rotors at the points of an H-shaped frame that is tethered to the ground by a long cable. The rotors act like the surface of a kite, providing the lift needed to keep the platform in the air. As they do so, they also turn dynamos that generate electricity. This power is transmitted to the ground through aluminium cables. Should there be a lull in the wind, the dynamos can be used in reverse as electric motors, to keep the generator airborne.

Here's another interesting proposal: Meanwhile, Wubbo Ockels of the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands has been developing another approach to airborne wind generation at lower altitude, with backing from Royal Dutch Shell and Nederlandse Gasunie, a natural-gas company. Dr Ockels’s idea is that a kite (without rotor blades) be launched from a ground station, turning a generator as it rises to an altitude of several hundred metres. When it reaches its full height, it alters its shape to catch less wind, and can thus be reeled back in using much less power than it produced when it was being paid out.

An arrangement of two or more of these kites could act together to produce a steady supply of power. When one kite was being released, part of the electricity produced would reel the other kite back in, and vice versa. The whole system would thus remain in surplus, and if well designed could deliver a constant current. This system has the advantage that it requires only simple parts—generators, kites and cables—and should thus be much cheaper to build than a conventional turbine.

more: http://economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8952080

Sotheby's/Mastercard debut yuppycard to mixed reviews

from Blogging Stocks by Zac Bissonnette Sotheby's (NYSE: BID) and GE Money have teamed up to launch a Sotheby's MasterCard (NYSE: MA). Predictably, the card is aimed at wealthier consumers, and even gives them a chance to earn donations to their favorite museums. From the Wall Street Journal: A cardholder who has charged $10,000, for example, can convert the 10,000 earned points into a $100 donation to one of 17 U.S. partner museums [...] Anyone accumulating 2.5 million points can book a Sotheby's specialist to conduct an auction for a charity event. The piece goes on to note that some museums have been slow to sign on, preferring to go with relationships they already have. I'm really happy to see the consumer credit industry focusing some energy on higher net worth individuals (you need an income of 100k+ to qualify for the card). As you will learn from reading the book Maxed Out, the industry seems to relentlessly target those customers who can least afford it. Perhaps Sotheby's and MasterCard will show that there is money to be made providing credit to customers who can afford it, while also supporting the arts.

Violinist in the subway

from Seth's Blog by Seth Godin I got more mail about this story in the Washington Post than any other non-blog topic ever. I saw it when it first came out, but didn't blog it because I thought the lesson was pretty obvious to my readers. [World-class violinist plays for hours in a subway station, almost no one stops to listen]. The experiment just proved what we already know about context, permission and worldview. If your worldview is that music in the subway isn't worth your time, you're not going to notice when the music is better than usual (or when a famous violinist is playing). It doesn't match the story you tell yourself, so you ignore it. Without permission to get through to you, the marketer/violinist is invisible. But why all the mail? (And the Post got plenty too). Answer: I think it's because people realized that if they had been there, they would have done the same thing. And it bothers us. It bothers us that we're so overwhelmed by the din of our lives that we've created a worldview that requires us to ignore the outside world, most of the time, even when we suffer because of it. It made me feel a little smaller, knowing that something so beautiful was ignored because the marketers among us have created so much noise and so little trust. I don't think the answer is to yell louder. Instead, I think we have an opportunity to create beauty and genius and insight and offer it in ways that train people to maybe, just maybe, loosen up those worldviews and begin the trust.